


Short Doctor/Rose Fics

by allegoricalrose (SilentStars)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Angst, Children, Crack, F/M, One Shot Collection, casanova - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:04:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 8,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3061979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentStars/pseuds/allegoricalrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor/Rose: A collection of drabbles and short fics</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Twelve/Rose: Overcoats and Greatcoats

He hears the sound of the universe and automatically snatches up his coat and dashes outside, but halts before he can turn the corner. Running to the Doctor may be instinct but Jack is thousands of years old. Old enough to exert some control over his wild whims and rapidly beating heart. ( _or maybe he just needs a moment to collect himself, a minute to compose his features into an expression less fanboy and more weary traveller_ )

From the shadows, pressed up against the scratchy brick wall, he watches the TARDIS door swing outward and a pretty young woman hesitantly step out, glancing around with a furrowed brow. Of course the Doctor has another companion. But his heart still judders, tries to overlay Rose’s face onto the brunette and blares out a warning. _Mismatch_. It’s not the first time he’s seen a new companion, but it happens every time. Like people dressed as celebrities, his brain automatically recoils at the discrepancy.

( _because the Doctor should be with Rose. It’s written into the very genetic code of the cosmos_ )

An older man steps out behind the Latest Beautiful Companion ( _and if the Doctor ever teases him about his predilection for the corporal and aesthetic, he’ll only raise his eyebrow. Because Jack is usually alone in the mornings and the lonely Doctor goes nowhere without his devoted entourage of beauties_ ). Sharp features, even sharper eyes. The weight of existence on his shoulders.

Somehow the Doctor changing doesn’t faze him: never has. He’s always been ephemeral, bodiless. His clothes are more himself than his freckles, his ears, his flapping hands ever were. ( _Rose is more the Doctor than his silver hair and his scarlet-lined overcoat_ )

He knows enough about what happened: Torchwood’s intelligence tracked him a few months after the Earth was returned home. He was without his third heart and that’s all Jack wants to know about that time.

How long has it been since the Crucible? There’s no doubt that this is the Doctor’s future and not his past. ( _Rose’s absence is palpable: the crushingly empty space to the Doctor’s right, the way his fingers flex and then curl up into themselves; the slump of his shoulders and the painstakingly neutral expression on his face. All he needs now is a manic grin—oh, there it is. He changes and remains the same_ )

( _he’ll never stray far from the man who held her hand_ )

The Companion ( _the-one-who-is-not-Rose_ ) takes a phone call and he watches the Doctor watch her. She hugs him and he stiffens up, his arms rigid and gangly.

His unitary and scar-tissued human heart hurts almost as much as he expects the Doctor’s two throb. It’s too late. Rose is long gone in the Doctor’s timeline, wherever she is, her body only stardust. And he knows the Doctor now sucks in deep breaths of the air wherever he goes, hoping for a single molecule of her radiance to return to the black hole he fights in his hearts. ( _and because without her, he often forgets to breathe past the point of his chest screaming: his chest is always tight_ ) And that he’s yet to capture, will never capture that missing piece. And that he knows it, too.

Jack turns around and walks away, his greatcoat fluttering in the Scottish wind.


	2. Nine/Rose: Even the Sky

He’ll forget her one day. 

Memories are stored as traces, connected patterns of neural firing, and stored away again as new memories after being retrieved. Each time they’re filed away again pieces of her will be lost, imbued with new emotional hues and the tiny details eroding away like the cliffs along the shoreline. Until one day, when he gazes off into the distance and fumbles for the scent of her hair under his nose, but he’s left with only a hopeless longing and the sensation of empty space.

When he grapples for the way that the light from a red dwarf star dappled across her jawline and neck but receives only a vision of pink and gold pastel colours, blurred and amorphous.

When he aches for the feel of her skin under his thumb but can only recall the way he craved it long after she was gone.

When his entire memory of her comprises only a vague, ephemeral throb that _something_ is missing in the caverns of his hearts and he doesn’t know what.

When he sees a discarded flower and feels compelled to rescue it from being trampled without knowing why, even though it’ll die anyway. Everything dies, in the end. Humans, stars, the universe, even him.

_One day._

But he’s a smart man. Impressive, even. And he takes care to stockpile away as many memories of her as he can create in such a short time. So when she runs toward him for a high five, he hugs her instead; when she steps outside his timeship, he gazes at her on the monitor, revelling in the way she glows when she smiles and the entire drizzly day brightens when she tilts her head; so he takes her hand more times than strictly necessary and pays attention to how soft her fingers are under his thumb, the texture of the goosebumps that prickle across her arm when he strokes her palm, the way her nail trailing up and down his knuckles makes his body buzz.

So he takes her to quiet spots, devoid of running or peril, just to devote the necessary attention to creating and reinforcing memory traces of her laugh, her tongue-tipped grin, each happy squirm of her toes burrowing into the crystalline sand.

"Have you been here before, Doctor?" she’d asked that time, reclining against a weathered monolith on the shores of a diamond sprinkled beach. "It’s gorgeous."

"Never been here before, but no doubt I’ll be here again."

He takes her hand, staring away into the sunset so that his thumb’s exploration of every crevice between her fingers appears idle when he’s really committing each skin cell to memory.

"Do you often go back to the same place?"

"Dunno, I seem to be hitting up a lot of early 21st century London recently. The Powell Estates in particular,” he teases lightly but his throat swells despite the feigned joviality.

_It’s not about the place. It’s never been about the place._

"I suppose one day you’ll wake up and realise you’ve been everywhere, huh?"

"Not possible." The breeze picks up and the loose strands of hair on the back of her neck flutter in time with his hearts. "There’s never enough time for that."

_Never enough time at all._

Each night while she sleeps, he runs through the memories in his mind, sitting on the edge of the TARDIS with his legs dangling down into the galaxies. The gleam in her eyes when she insisted he dance; the warmth and pain in her eyes when he told her about his people; the steel determination in her eyes when he tries to protect her but she refuses to abandon those she loves.

And the memory he clings to with a more desperate grip than he’s ever held on to anything in his centuries of life, is the way her lips felt against his. Each muscle movement, each patch of dry skin and each breathless millisecond she drew forth his soul as he was drawing out her golden light.

The golden glow is shimmering in his fingertips, now, and he tries to shake it away while clutching to each neuron in the delicate web of his memories of her. New body; new cells. Can a man unchanging only in his vicissitudes trust that the precious memories won’t be tainted during their retrieval by a new set of eyes, a new layer of skin, a new pair of hearts? The joy infused in every moment, every touch, every curl and purse of her lips: will it remain, or will the new man add his own emotions and sully their purity?

( _He doesn’t have his answer, doesn’t have time to consider until they’re under falling ash and he takes her hand. It feels the same, it feels even better, it’s so much more. All those memories, previously diffused across neural circuitry, are now integrated and intrinsic to every aspect of his being. He’s now a man defined by, created from, one half of a whole from Rose and he gapes at her as that empty space between his hearts shudders in its fullness_.)


	3. Tentoo/Rose: Blue

"Rose! Stop!"

She snatched her hand back from the basket of dappled violet fruit the waiter had dropped off at their table with a flirtatious wink a few minutes ago. 

"Why? Is it poisonous?" she choked, turning to the side and spitting out the excess salvia in her mouth. 

"Well, no, luckily not since I’m going to make a wild stab in the dark and say you’ve already eaten a monettian fruit while you were waiting for me to freshen up."

"Yes? But if it’s not poisonous, why do you care if I eat another one? It was really tasty, kind of like a mix between a pomegranate and a plum…but sweeter, and without any seeds."

He scratched the back of his neck, staring at her with an odd mixture of amusement and trepidation on his face. She could see a smirk simmering below the surface of his lips and narrowed her eyebrows. “Yup, that’s it. Um, we should probably get back to the TARDIS, just, er, trust me on this.”

"Are you jealous of the cute waiter? Is that what it is? We JUST got back from, er, doing what we did in the changing room, and you’re already on a possessive rampage? You need to get a grip, Doctor. We’re on holiday, just chill out."

She leaned back in her seat crossed her arms. He stayed standing, shifting his weight between his feet and fidgeting with the hem of his swim trunks. He seemed to be torn between staring at her and staring absolutely anywhere else and he looked suspiciously like he was trying to hold in some type of strong emotion.

"You should probably have a good look at your skin right now," he finally suggested, the corners of his lips shaking. "I know it’s bright out here, but come into the shade and look." 

Rose stood up with a huff and held out her arm under the restaurant awning.

Blue.

Blue with multi-coloured dots spread throughout her skin like strange oversized freckles.

Blue with multi-coloured…fingerprints?

The Doctor burst into laughter at her bewilderment, holding his sides and bending over in mirth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he choked out between breaths. “That fruit there, it acts on the receptors on human skin like chemicals in photo paper: you become like a temporary canvas and other peoples’ tactile receptors the paint. Every time someone touches you, it leaves a mark. Must have some retrogressive effects, maybe from leftover skin oils….Anyway, it’s supposed to be beautiful and poetic, a form of artistic expression and social communication in Kyiian telepathic culture. I have to admit,” he chuckled, “you do look quite the picture, Rose Tyler.”

Glaring at the Doctor, she rubbed at her arm but nothing happened; it was like the colour was part of her skin. There were marks all across her arms and legs, across her exposed midriff, and glancing down her vest top, she could see an intense concentration across her cleavage and under her white bikini top. She didn’t want to think about the area around her bikini bottom.

She was about to fly off the handle or at least blush furiously (not that anyone would be able to tell) when a movement in the distance stilled her. A grin slowly worked its way across her mouth and she stepped toward the Doctor.

“Well, isn’t that lovely. What a fascinating fruit, thanks for such a thorough explanation,” she simpered sweetly, swaying her hips slowly as she transversed the rest of the distance between them and ran her hands up his bare chest.

His eyes turned wary.

“You should tell mum all about it too- I see her on her way over now. Must have finished her siesta nap early. She’ll be _fascinated_ by the effects.”

This time, it was her turn to hold back laughter at the moment the ball dropped and the Doctor’s expression transformed in a flash from hilarity to horror.


	4. Ten/Rose: Gallifryean Standards

“Rose, I…I can’t…I…You…sorry.”

She crossed her arms and rocked back onto her heels. “Doctor. That’s the sixth time you’ve kissed me—today—and then run off. Seriously, make up your mind.”

“I… There are things you don’t know about me…things you’d be horrified to know…”   
“You’ve told me about the time war. I don’t blame you for it, you did the right thing. Someone had to make that choice.”

“It’s not that…well, it’s partially that, but…” He wrung his hands and turned away from her, fiddling with a lever on the console dashboard.

“Is it that curse of the Time Lords crap again? Because we went to that bloody retreat in the Himalayas and even _they_ told you to get off your high horse.”

He sniffed. “And that was very rude of them. They’re lucky I bothered to save them at all from that Yeti-resembling Rhultican orphan.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So why can’t we be together? I know you want to.” She ran her fingers up his sides and he shivered but didn’t turn around to face her.

“Rose, I… That’s not it. I…”

She waited patiently, resting her chin on his shoulder but not pushing any further.

“I… I don’t think I could give you what you need.” He closed his eyes and tried to implement some of those breathing exercises from said Tibetan workshop.

Her voice softened and she looped her arms around his waist. “Doctor… I don’t care about domestics or marriage or babies… I just want you. You, in whatever form you come in.”

“Whatever form?”

“Whatever form,” she confirmed.

He turned around hesitantly and sought her eye. He took a deep breath.

“Even if we couldn’t have…um…even if I couldn’t fulfill your sexual needs?”

She froze but quickly regained her composure. “We’re not compatible?”

“Wellll, technically Time Lords and humans are sexually compatible. It’s just… Let’s just say my genetics focused more on my brain than on my…peripheral anatomy.”

She bit her lip to keep from laughing. It wasn’t funny. It really wasn’t – the beautiful Time Lord in front of her, worried about something like this…

“Size isn’t everything, Doctor.”

“But…”

“Let me see what we’re working with here.”

He turned the colour of the raspberry jam still staining his lips. “Rose…” he whined.

“Really, though. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think, and even if it is, there are still…other things we can do. It’s not worth giving all this up just because you’re still scarred from your locker room days…”

“It was humiliating,” the Doctor muttered, his eyes on the grating. “I cried so much about it that I had to sleep in a barn most nights. Because I didn’t need to be the boy with the tiny…you know…as well as the crybaby.”

Rose kissed him gently, trying to tell him non-verbally what her words obviously had failed to do. _I love you; micropenis or not._

He resisted slightly at first, his whole body tense with shame, but under her stubborn ministrations he finally gave in, his lips parting and allowing her tongue entrance. He deepened the kiss, leisurely at first but soon their nerves were singing and he’d reversed their positions so that she was pressed back against the console.

Moving slowly, she inched her hands down from his hair to his waist to his hips to under his trouser waistband. When he made no move to stop her or even tense up again, instead moving his lips to her neck, she unbuttoned him and lowered the zipper.

“I love you,” he murmured into her skin.

“I love you too,” she whispered, “no matter what you—holy crap. What is that?”

There. Now he froze.

“See, I told you, I…”

“No no no. No, no,” she stuttered, “You… You’re big. Very, very large. Wide. Um. This is small for a Time Lord?!”

He straightened his back minutely. “Yes?”

“Shit. Okay, well, I’m glad. I’m really, _really_ glad.” She laughed and captured his lips again. “Because a millimeter bigger and… _Crap_.”

“Too big?” he breathed, his eyes wide.

She gulped. “Just right.”

“Just as I suspected, Rose Tyler: I was made for you.” He scooped her up into his arms and swaggered out of the console room toward the bedroom corridor.

“Are your trousers bigger on the inside too?” she squeaked, still a little dumbfounded.

“Oh, yes…”


	5. Ten/Rose: The Weight of Empathy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a doctorwhofest prompt: "enemies"

“Do you have any weaknesses?” she asks, her fingers idly stroking his bare chest. “I mean, like Superman has his Kryptonite?”

He laughs and watches as her fingers bounce across his skin. “I’m not a superhero, Rose.”

“I know, but, like, you have strengths. Like your sense of time and how you can always hear things that I can’t.”

“Yeah,” he agrees cautiously, “but those are just differences in perceptual sensitivity. And besides, every Time Lord had them, so they’re not exactly special.”

“Fine,” she huffs, “you’re extra-sensitive then. But is there anything that can hurt you, more so than, say, the average human?”

He tucks his hand behind his head. “Well, there are a few things that cause adverse reactions in my physiology. Aspirin, for example. I’m not sure I would call it a weakness; you can’t metabolise roentgen radiation but we don’t go around saying that humans have a tragic weakness to radiation poisoning.” 

“No, but it’s a given. Like bullet wounds and drowning. It’s just that everyone knows our vulnerabilities.” She takes a deep breath. “But...there aren’t any Time Lords left, your differences aren’t just known. At least to me. I don’t want to accidently bake a cake and discover that cardamom is toxic to you. Or accept a trinket or something from someone who is secretly your enemy that causes you to stop breathing and I don't know how to fix it and...”

He understands now. She’s asking for the same reason that he now double-checks their flight coordinates and scouts the landscape before letting her step outside. The reason he’s furious when she wanders off and why he holds her in his arms every night even though he’s not tired.

“Okay,” he acquiesces with a soft smile, rolling on his side to see her better. “In the morning I’ll make you a list, okay? Anything that you might not assume is toxic. And how to neutralise each of them.” He trails a finger along her cheek.

“Thanks,” she murmurs and snuggles closer, her lips brushing a couple of dozy kisses into his chest.

She’s almost asleep when he speaks again, his voice rumbling through her own chest. “Love. That’s one thing that won’t be on the list. There’s no antidote either.”

“Hmm?” she mumbles, her eyes blinking slowly open.

“My greatest weakness is probably love. It’s why I never fit into my birth culture of neutrality and non-interference. My decisions should be cool and logical, it was hammered into my head for decades at school. But I can't; every decision I make is weighted with empathy, with love… I can see good and evil and all the shades in between; I can see the time lines of my actions and those of others; I can see the past and the future, all is was and is and every could be… And yet I often find myself turning my back on those caustic facts, entranced by individuals rather than of their tiny place in the grand scheme of the universe. I see the good, or at least the potential for good, in everyone from murderous slugs to 19-year-old human girls in department store basements. And when they go, when I have to make impossible decisions… _That’s_ what hurts me the most. Toxic to my hearts, you might say.”

She’s quiet and he thinks she’s fallen asleep, but then she raises her head onto her hand to look at him. “Love hurts,” she whispers, “but pain isn’t a weakness: it’s an alarm. Pain alerts you to what’s important.”

He stares at her, stares at the tiny human, warm and supple in his arms.

She bites her lip at his silence and then continues. “Sometimes I think you’re your greatest weakness. Your own worst enemy. You berate yourself for every impossible decision you make, internalising each person’s loss or death as a personal failure. But if you didn’t, if you didn’t feel that pain...where would you be? What kind of judge and executioner would you be? The agony of love keeps you going, keeps you fighting for what’s right. A morality based on empathy...what more could we ask for from the man who has saved us all thousands of times and will do so a thousand more times?”

It’s not the first time she’s stunned him but it’s the first time he’s been struck speechless.

Her eyes contain the entire universe and there are stars embedded in her rosy and flushed skin.

“I love you,” he finally chokes out and the novel words reverberate through the overflowing caverns of his hearts. Never before has he strung those three simple syllables together and he knows at that moment that he will never say them to anyone else.

“I know,” she replies as she settles back into his arms but he feels drops of cool liquid roll down his chest.


	6. things that were never hers

Numbness allows her to accept their comfort for an undeserving minute before she steels herself, plasters a brave smile on her face and a straight jacket around her straining heart, and manages to hold it as they drive to her parallel home in her alternate life. They praise her for her stiff upper-lip, her strength, her adaptability. She nods and distracts herself with everything in her path, wishing but not bothering to hope for a reprieve from the cold while insisting she’s plenty warm, thank you. Her mum tells her she’s luck , that promises were never made and that it could have been worse, reflects on burying her first husband and oh, yes, she’s so lucky, and Rose nods and agrees and finds objects to occupy her hands. She knows that words don't mean a damn thing and that they also mean everything.

**( _Because I was always his  
and he was never mine_)**

It hurts to pay confession to an illusion but she has nothing left to lose, and when he makes an flat joke and lets the time run out she learns how wrong she can be. She wraps more pieces of her fading heart into the tattered hope chest and sets it on fire.

She gives into the weakness of her mother's arms on that beach but only for a fraction of a minute. She pretends to be resilient the rest of the drive home and she pretends the rest of the dying year. She’s a ghost wearing the suit of an indomitable girl.

**( _Because I am always his  
and he will never be mine_)**

Six months later she's heart-deep in love with another boy, a short bald one this time with leg rolls, seeped with infinite possibilities instead of void stuff. She tries, she really tries, but somehow the first time he grasps her finger he manages to pull loose more painful shards from her entombed heart. When he cries in the frosty night and it's not her place to pick him up even as her brain galvanises the motoric sequence (he's not hers and he'll never be) she rolls over in bed and wonders if this will be her epitaph.

Rose Tyler: lover of things that could never be hers.  


She sees other babies on the street; they're not Tony and they're something she'll never have and always, _always_ she's intruding.

Even her universe is not her own.

**( _I will always love you  
even though you'll never be mine_)**

Where does this inextinguishable hope draw its fuel? It's been doused for so long she's forgotten how it feels until he's at the end of a long street. He's frozen and then he's running and the _she's_ running and for a splinter of a second she wonders if the stars might let her taste the milk and honey others stockpile in locked closets with two matching keys. But it doesn't and as usual it’s a Dalek who exterminates the swan-song of a flame.  


Other events transpire but she can barely recall Earth's homecoming parade once she opens the doors and the beach seared inside her eyelids is also visible to unblinking eyes. And she barely fights, she barely implores her never-lover to stay, to take her back, to admit something she's certain can never be true, and she interprets his expression as pity at the little she does ask.

And then hope-dressed-in-blue whispers in her ear. 

" _I was always yours, Rose Tyler. And now you'll always be mine."_


	7. Coordination

Rose sighed and rested her head on the Doctor’s shoulder but just as quickly lifted it again. Stupid inhibition and self-control. Sliding so that their legs were flush against each other, she sighed again, more dramatically this time.

He looked down at her with amusement. “Difficulties?”

"Are you sure these drinks really have alcohol in them? Or, I dunno, that this type of alcohol isn’t compatible with humans?"

"Just standard grain alcohol in those, Rose." He took a quick sip of her martini and let it sit in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. Her eyes followed its course raptly. 

"This planet’s atmosphere must be neutralising it then."

The Doctor shifted around to face her and took a quick lick of her neck, letting the flavour sit on his tongue for a moment before pressing it to the top of his mouth. “0.18% blood alcohol content. Seems about right for six and a half martinis.”

"Exactly! Why am I still stone-cold sober? And for that matter, so are you, and you’ve had even more that I have! Look—" Rose jumped up from their booth and stomped along the edge of a carpet on tiptoe while touching her index finger to her nose. "Haven’t had this much balance since I was six and on the gymnastics team!"

Her audience of one pursed his lips and tried to maintain a serious face, nodding and pretending to consider, but her sharp and unwavering vision easily detected the wobbling of the corner of his lips and the twinkle in his eyes. 

"But can you dance?"

"Yes!" she all but whined, busting a pop star-esque move and spinning perfectly in place. With another deep sigh, she crawled back into the booth and curled up next to the shaking-with-laughter man. "What’s so funny? I’ve probably developed some sort of alien virus that affects my alcohol tolerance or something."

He schooled his face into a vaguely neutral expression and nodded. “Always possible. Shall we check you out in the infirmary?”

Rose yawned, wrapping her arm around his waist and snuggling closer into his side. Mmm, he smelled of cedar and laundry detergent. Did he wash his own clothes in the TARDIS washing machine or did she do it for him? Rose highly suspected the latter but a new fantasy of him ironing in his boxers and t-shirt was added to her late-night queue. “Nah. Happy enough here. ‘s a nice club, anyway.”

"Quite right. Also, you probably don’t have an alien virus." He moved his arm that had been draped across the back of the booth down to stroke her shoulder. "I suspect I’m to blame for your unimpaired motor control. It’s one of the reasons I’m not impaired by alcohol, really… Time Lords have higher baseline levels of oxytocin—it’s a brain chemical—and it tends to negate the cerebellar dysfunction that comes along with alcohol ingestion."

"What?"

"Oxytocin counteracts the movement problems associated with drinking," he translated while tucking an errant strand of hair back behind her ears. 

Sliding her fingers under his suit jacket and grabbing a handful of shirt, she closed her eyes and nuzzled more deeply into his side. “What does that have to do with me?”

"I…" He seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment, finally clearing his throat before continuing. "We, um, touch. A lot. Technically I emit a small amount of it through my skin, but mostly it’s transmitted via the simple effects of social touch on your own production, and—"

"We hardy ever touch," Rose murmured, hoisting a calf over his and entangling it between his legs. "Not nearly enough."

"Mmm…" The band finished their set and the background noise dimmed. Neither spoke for a few moments, the sound of his hearts thumping in her ear lining up and bracketing hers. 

"It’s a pity. I really wanted to work up the courage to kiss you tonight," she mumbled, her lips hardly moving against his chest. Their biological synchrony faltered and then matched up again.

She felt his abdominal muscles contract and then the sensation of his lips in her hair, pressing a light kiss before sitting back again. “Me too.” 

The DJ hit play and the small anteroom was filled with rhythmic music doing its best to entrain the heartbeats of its occupants and get them dancing. She ignored it, content with the slow and steady drumming beneath her ears. 

"We’ll do a picnic tomorrow," he whispered, slumping down in the booth and shifting her slightly so that his mouth was close enough to her ear. Circles within circles were etched into her back and she burrowed further into his chest. "All sorts of plans. Flying stingrays, giant monoliths. Just you wait, Rose Tyler."


	8. April Fool's AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the Nonny who suggested I write an arranged marriage AU: I was planning on just declining but after my bearded Billie Piper art attempt, I decided to be creative with whatwecanfic‘s awesome April Fool’s Bodyswap Prompt instead. So, voila: AU :-)

“This is for your own good, Rose,” Howard hissed as he dragged the literally kicking and screaming duchess out from her hiding spot in the wardrobe and hauled her over his shoulder. “And even if it’s not, you do as I say.”

“You don’t get to make decisions for me, you vile cretin! Mother! Mother!!!”

“Yell all you like. She’s at Lady Beverly’s. I sent her there for the weekend.” Howard would be twirling a moustache if he could grow one. “Which makes me master of the manor. And you _will_ be marrying your long-patient betrothed today. I’ve grown weary of waiting on you and your whimsical notions of education and independence.” His face split into a sneer. “I can’t wait to see your new lord and master depose you of those follies. He’ll teach you to behave, mark my words.”

“I’ll only marry for love” his captive spat, “not for some political arrangement! You just want to take over his company. This has nothing to do with me and everything to do with your greed and your blasted fruit business. Let. Me. Go!”

With a sharp elbow to her stepfather’s groin, Rose wriggled out of his grip and shot out down the hall. She almost tripped over her long skirts but she expediently tucked their ends into her cleavage and continued running, glancing behind her every few seconds to ensure she wasn’t being followed. Dashing into the woods, she made a beeline for the long-forgotten cottage sitting dilapidated on the edge of the border between the de Tyler estate and the adjoining woodlands.

Her corset severely restricted her breathing and she had to stop to allow her burning lungs time to recover, hoping she’d managed to evade the madman who’d tricked her mother into marriage. Just as the white haze began to recede from her vision, a hand clamped over her mouth and arms were twisted behind her back.

“Got you now, trollop!”

She struggled against him but his hold was strong and inescapable.

“What do you have to say now, huh?” Howard taunted; she tried to bite his hand but the angle wasn’t right. “Poor little heiress…can’t stand someone else having the upper hand. You’ll submit soon enough, to me and in a very different way to your husband.” Howard let out a bawdy laugh and marched her toward the cottage. “I’ll be honest with you, now that you’re quiet for once in your life. I would have opposed any alternative match that made you happy; hell, I would sacrifice this arrangement here if I didn’t know how much you despise him. It’s time you were taken down a notch, and I must say, I’m thrilling in anticipation.”

Two of her stepfather’s footmen appeared from behind the back of the cottage and she realized she’d run straight into a trap; she’d thought for sure her imbecile of a stepfather didn’t know about her beloved hideaway.

Howard removed his hand from her mouth to open the door and hauled her through it, the two burly men coming on either side of her to hold her in place.

“Let me go! I’ll only marry for love and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!”

Howard snorted and roughly turned her head to view the scene inside the cottage.

A cowering clergyman.

The bitterly-protested fiancé.

Enough witnesses to ensure total legality.

A locked door.

Still in a death grip and a hand placed back over her mouth to mute her screaming, Rose was forced to stand through a heavily truncated marriage service, with vows spoken on her behalf and her puppeteered nod serving as consent.

As the vicar pronounced them husband and wife, a triumphant laugh erupted from Howard’s throat and he released her, pushing her toward the groom.

Her groom. Her husband. Rose shivered.

“You may…kiss the bride?” the officiate stammered, closing his bible and glancing nervously at the hellfire bride. For a moment, he swore he saw a flash of gold in her eyes and took a step back.

The bridesgroom put his hand on his wife’s arm and gulped. And then with a whoop they broke out into identical beams, speaking through their eyes and capturing their joy between two pairs of eager lips. Rose wound her arms around his neck and he drew her closer, kissing like it was the end of the universe when it was really the beginning.

They parted finally, smirking at the dead silence and gaping mouths of their witnesses.

“See? I married for love. And yet again, there was nothing you could have done to stop me.”

And with a flip of her hair and her beloved Lord du Temps on her arm, Rose Tyler sauntered out of the makeshift chapel. Tomorrow they’d enact their plan to repossess all his late fathers’ stolen banana fields and put his step-father-in-law in prison but today was all theirs and she intended to halt the sun in its path.

“Stuck with me now,” she teased as he took her hand outside.

“There’s no one I’d rather be stuck with,” he returned, grinning and swinging their arms.

A noise behind them made them freeze; her stepfather and his goons had apparently roused themselves from their stupor and were advancing on them in fury.

“And for our first act: Run!”


	9. Not his Girlfriend

“Rose is NOT my  _girlfriend_ , Jackie,” the Doctor snapped, the corners of his lips curling downward in disgust. His shoulders straightened and he glowered at the blonde woman as she rolled her eyes and went back into the kitchen, muttering something that even his ultrasonic hearing couldn’t quite decipher. The hand in his dropped away and when he sought it out again he was met with only air and a stony expression.

“Rose…” he started, his lower lip jutting out in a way that Rose usually found adorable but now only stoked her anger and feelings of rejection. It wasn’t like she expected the Doctor to shout about their newly-intimate relationship from the rooftops but the raw contempt evident in his face at the suggestion of their coupledom stung like a slap to the face. They hadn’t quite defined their relationship yet, in fairness, so maybe it was her that was in the wrong. Maybe Time Lords were into casual hookups; her limited experience didn’t make that seem extremely likely, but then again what he’d told her about his species would fill exactly one postage stamp. 

Or maybe it was just her. Maybe this was his way of ending it or slowing it down or whatever. Fine. She didn’t have to like it but she wasn’t going to go all needy or emotional on him. She twisted her mouth into a tight smile and shrugged.

“Whatever, Doctor. It’s fine. I’m going to go help mum with the tea.” She turned away but had only taken a couple of steps when he stopped her, gently gripping her shoulders and moving to stand in front of her.

“You’re  _not_  my girlfriend, Rose.” He faltered then, wetting his lips. His eyes darted back and forth between hers. “Unless, that is, you want to be? Just boyfriend and girlfriend that is. Um.” 

Rose bit the inside of her cheek and said nothing.

“It’s just…” he continued, tucking an errant strand of hair out of her eyes and safely behind her ear, “well… You’re more than that to me. Far more important.”

“What am I, then?” she asked quietly. His hand returned up to her face, brushing away a tear from her cheek she didn’t realise until now had fallen.

“My beloved? Soulmate? Caretaker of my hearts? Other-9/10ths?” 

Her throat closed and she had to grit her teeth together to stop her face from collapsing into ugly-crying. “Yeah?”

“And more. Bonnie to my Clyde? My sunshine? My secure base?” He hesitated. “My wife?”

“Wife?!” Jackie screeched, flinging open the kitchen shutters, a butter knife clutched threateningly in her hand.

Rose buried her snotty face in his jacket and slid her knee into the arm of the couch to anchor him still as he tried to skitter out the front door.


	10. The Biggest Cuddler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Who is more of a cuddler, the Doctor or Rose?"_

“ _Doctor…”_  Rose whined, struggling for a moment before realising that the exertion was only making her hotter. “’s too warm to be so close, I’m going to wake up with nightmares. If I manage to fall asleep at all in this furnace of a hotel room, that is…”

“Mmm, but you feel so good,” the living radiator beside her mumbled, already half asleep with his arms and legs wrapped tightly around her like she was his childhood teddy bear. Normally he was the perfect bed mate (well, perfect as in non-aversive anyway. There was always room for improvement in this particular location…) but the lack of air conditioning on this desert planet made even  _his_  body temperature feel stifling.

“I’m dripping in sweat; your suit will be soaked and stained at this rate!” She hoped that might sway him to give her some space. She was wrong.

“Don’t mind,” he yawned, burrowing his head into her chest. His breath was hot on her skin and she squirmed. He nestled closer, his foot beginning to slide up and down her jean leg. She felt his lips frown through her t-shirt. “If you’re warm, it’s probably because of all these clothes you’re wearing.”

Rose glanced down at her tank top and jeans. “Don’t think it’s that, Doctor.”

“Well, take ‘em off and we’ll see,” he murmured, moving his face northward until his lips were pressed to bare skin. She shivered at the offhandedness of his comment. “See! Can’t be that warm, you’re covered in goosebumps.”

“Doctor,” she ground out through her teeth. 

“Fine, fine,” he sighed and sat up, disentangling himself from her. She puffed out a long breath, mostly from relief and the feeling of cool air of her sweat-glistening skin, although she couldn’t deny a pang of loss.

Turning onto her side, she closed her eyes only to snap them open when he wrapped himself around her once more. With a groan, she flopped onto her back and glared at him. He only smiled contentedly and slung a bare leg over hers, rolling to his stomach and tucking an arm around her waist and under her back.

_Wait._

_“_ Are you…naked?” she breathed, feeling dizzy now. Was this a fever dream? Had she finally succumbed to heat exhaustion? 

“Oh, yes,” he drolled immediately. “You said you were warm; I sorted it!”

“Yes..but…I…” Rose spluttered for a bit before collecting enough pieces of her scattered mind to form a sentence. “How is you being naked going to cool me down?!”

She felt his pout against her shoulder. “Dunno. Less trapped heat? I still say you’d be cooler if you took off your clothes too, Rose, but you refused so I did the gentlemanly thing.”

“Taking off your clothes and cuddling into your companion is a gentlemanly thing?”

“Well…” He nuzzled into her neck.

“And if I also took off my clothes, and we were both…naked cuddling, you wouldn’t have a problem with that?” She held her breath, wondering if she’d gone too far (or even more likely, if he’d even understand the innuendo).

“If you think it would help, you should go for it. Besides, better skin-to-skin contact; doesn’t that sound glorious?”

“Glorious,” Rose repeated slowly, now contemplating the likelihood that it was the Doctor who was hallucinating. Did Time Lords get heat stroke?

“Chop chop then!” His eyes were closed but his face betrayed no joke.

Right. Naked cuddling. She was going for it; it was probably her only chance for anything even remotely related her night time fantasies. Who was Rose Tyler to have to be asked more than twice?

Before she could psych herself out she jumped out of bed and whipped off her clothes, cursing her decision to wear tight jeans in a hot climate. Finally, with a groan of relief and only mildly-heavy panting from the struggle, she fell back onto the bed. 

He curled into her immediately. 

Skin on skin on skin.

The first thing she processed was that he was, in fact, wearing pants of some sort. A tiny wiggle confirmed they were cotton; short. Tight. Soft. He hummed contentedly and re-inserted his leg between hers, rotating his hips so that the whole of her right side was flush with his skin.

“Much better,” he yawned, making a sound not unlike a sleepy kitten. “Better for you?”

“Much better,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes closed . “We’ll have to do it this way more often.”

He made that delicious little noise again and pressed his lips to her collarbone. “Sweet dreams, Rose.”

Sweat dripped off her skin, his breath was hot on her chest, and she’d never looked forward to a sleepless night more. Besides, plenty of time to scheme reasons to stay another night on this planet.


	11. Universally Challenged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Cross over with the His Dark Materials trilogy)

It’s a cool winter morning when Will stumbles out of bed and almost slams into an errant blue police box right in the middle of his bedroom. The door is open and there’s a man leaning back against it, his head ducked and resting on his knees. 

He’d curl his still partially sleep-paralysed hands into a fist but there’s something so hopeless, so defeated about this man in a wrinkled brown suit and wild hair. Clearing his throat, Will waits, adrenaline racing.

The man looks up, red-rimmed eyes quickly eclipsed by a manic smile and an over-enthusiastic leap to his feet. It’s not graceful, it’s more gangly, but even beyond the theatrics there’s a hum of power in the man’s movements that has Will even more on edge.

“I’ve heard stories about you,” the man says with a cocked eyebrow and a painfully casual cadence. “Stories from angels and demons. Stories of travelling between universes. Stories of a knife that can cut holes in the universe and a boy who can close them back up.”

Will’s eyes dart around his room, locating the nearest heavy object for possible future reference before eying up the man again. “Is that so?”

“Is--” The man clears his throat, attempts and fails to adopt an expression less eager and more nonchalant. “Is it true?”

Will is quiet for a moment. “Who are you?” 

“I’m--” The man censors himself from what is clearly a route response to the question and looks down at his hands, drumming a dysthymic beat on the seam of his trouser pocket with his fingers. “I lost someone.”

The almost-man, still-a-boy inhales a sharp breath and holds it. “Me too.”

Shoulders slump. “Ah. Then the walls are closed?”

“I can’t get through anymore. No one can. And it has to stay that way.”

“Yes. Thought as much.” The man’s voice is almost inaudible. 

They stare at one another for a few moments, both looking past the skin’s shell. 

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

Stillness again; the snow falling outside the window is louder than cannon shots.

“I tell myself I’m fighting to make a difference, here in this universe, for her. And she’s doing the same in hers.”

“Yes. It still hurts, though”

“Yes.”

Man and man nod at each other. The older one shakes the younger one’s hand, spirals of emotions passing through fingertips. He goes inside his box and it fades away. Will goes back to bed, pulling the covers over his head and pretending to be a boy once again.


	12. A Pre-Frowned Face

The Doctor collapses down onto the surprisingly-tatty sofa and she quickly pulls a pillow in front of her chest to muffle the sound of her heart accelerating. 

“The conceptual geometer’s repaired. We can go somewhere if you’d like.”

Rose glances down at her pyjamas. “Can we go in the morning? Else I’d probably fall asleep in your arms at some point.” Ohhh that was awkward phraseology. She affects as innocent an expression as possible, hoping the Doctor won’t pick up on it.

He doesn’t. Or maybe he does. “Wouldn’t want that. We’ll go in the morning, after you’ve had your sleep.”

“Great.” He smiles at her, an eager grin that takes up half his face; she clutches the pillow closer.  _Oh, god, get a grip, Rose!_

 _“_ What are you watching, then?” He turns to the telly, eyebrows raised and interested. 

“Just some costume drama. Not sure what it is yet, I’d just changed over after Corrie finished.”

“Hmm,” he hums, settling back and draping his arm across the back of the couch. “Looks like they’re trying to convince us it’s the Enlightenment era, though the music is way off, and I--oh. Right.” He turns toward her with a silly grin but there’s something off in his eyes. “Casanova. Should have known you’d be into this. You and your pretty boys.”

This is probably the point where a platonic friend would gush over a cute guy on screen to her other platonic friend. She should probably...do that. Glancing at the screen, she considers the main character. “He  _is_  rather fit. Don’t you think?”

“Harumph,” the Doctor harumphs. “He looks about twelve.”

Rose smirks, leaning her head back onto the back of the sofa casually. Her hair may or may not be under his hand. He doesn’t move it away. “Suppose he  _could_  do with a little more facial hair. I always liked Mickey’s sideburns.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched.

“And his hair’s not really my type. I like it bigger. More, I don’t know, on top. Looks like a semi-mullet.”

Mmm, his eyes though. Beautiful and blue and endless. She’s got a newfound appreciation for that colour. Can’t imagine why. 

“At least you know he’s good in bed. Always a plus.”

“He also had numerous venereal diseases, Rose.”

He’s pouting, actually pouting, and she suspects she may have gone too far in her teasing. “But stuck to one era? How boring is that? You may have ruined me for anyone without a time machine.”

“She’s a time and relative dimensions in space ship, Rose.” But his fingers have twisted around a strand of her hair now and his eyes are more than a little triumphant. 

\---

Her fingers are tangled in his hair and her lips make their way up his jawline and across his sideburns to nibble on a tender earlobe. 

“I do like a man in sideburns,” she murmurs huskily and his beautiful brown eyes snap closed as her other hand travels south. “I miss those big blue eyes of yours though.”

He pouts, he actually pouts. And when this new body pouts, those lips are irresistible. She snags one between her teeth. 

“It’s alright though. Your body’s just packaging to me.” She emphasises the word ‘packaging’ with a squeeze and his hips jerk upward. “I love what’s inside... In particular, what’s going to be inside me in a couple of minutes.”

“Minutes?” he gasps, a plea in his eyes. 

“Minutes.”

“Rooooose,” he whines and she nips at his lower lip again and then soothes the bite with her tongue. 

“Basically,” she adds as she slides down his body. “As long as you stay away from dumb looks like bow ties or floppy hair or... I don’t know, sonic sunglasses, you’ve got a chance with me.”

He promises she’ll never have to endure those things as long as they’re together and she opens her mouth wide. 


	13. a scintilla in the sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100% angst. Given that it's set in the final minutes of End of Time :-)

He’s cloaked in shadows and she’s ablaze, even at midnight.

New Year’s parties cast a soft glow along the abandoned courtyard, Christmas lights at the end of their life cycle, street lamps and safety lighting and still she’s a thousand times more radiant. All is darkness except her and the snowflakes painting newborn constellations on her scarf, a brand new scarf about which he’s had years of technicolour dreams.

> _once he’d lost himself in the sight of its rainbow fluff caught in her eyelashes. he’d captured some between thumb and forefinger and told her to make a wish. she’d closed her eyes and blew and he knew. he’d always known._
> 
> _once he’d lost her and was left with blue fluff in his own wet eyelashes, in his teeth, at the bottom of his pockets, caught in the grating years later._
> 
> ( _once he would have made a wish)_

He’d intended to stay huddled in the dark but a plea of pain escapes and his lighthouse whirls to life as she spies his hunched over form, swinging her beam into the bleakness of the storm.

Three steps and he’d be in her light. Two fingers to her temple. One paradox. Three steps and she can know everything; three steps and they can hide in the TARDIS while time bleeds around them. Three steps and he’s immolated in her flame.

> _once she turned his blacks to grey and his greys to snowy white._
> 
> _once he’d been a chiaroscuro and not a screaming absence of colour._
> 
> _(but only once.)_

He stays in the shadow’s pall.

They converse but it’s just a polite script and it can’t end there. Not like this: not like they’re only ships passing in the night. Like she’s not both angles to his sextant.

“What year is this?” His question comes out stilted and desperate and his next wince isn’t from radiation burn.

She turns back and he can breathe again. “Blimey, how much have you had? 2005, January the first.”  

“2005. Tell you what. I bet you’re going to have a really great year,” he just barely manages to croak out. The darkness encroaches and he’s no longer sure what’s light in his peripheral vision and what’s phosphene. Light without light.

“Yeah? See you.”

It’s her smile that kills him in the end; he dies sun-blind and alone.

> _once he was lost._
> 
> _once he was found._
> 
> _once he navigated the sea of the stars by her light. once she was his sun, his moon, his north star and every constellation, his compass, his lighthouse, his spark in the endless dark of space._
> 
> _once._
> 
> _(never again)_


End file.
